creative pathways of everyday life

CREATIVE PATHWAYS OF EVERYDAY LIFE 

PROFESSOR, LENE TANGGAARD AALBORG UNIVERSITY, DENMARK

Introduction

• Studying the creativity involved in accomplishing mundane life in itself is seldom highlighted by researchers focusing explicitly on creativity

Train creativity

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Pathways as a term

Aim: To sheed light on the process dimensions of creativity

• The idea of studying pathways is based on the notion that creativity is the particular dimension of potentiality in everyday life which is ‘not yet there’ and which cannot always be imagined beforehand.

Pathways

• My own pathways are created along

• Institutional pathways and

• Societal pathways• As part of distributed

social practices

Drawing on inspiration from two concepts:

Trajectories of participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and Affordances Gibson (1979)

1) IT URGES US TO LOOK AT THE IDEA OF THE CREATIVE PERSON AND

2)IT ADRESSES CREATIVITY AS BEING ABOUT MUCH MORE THAN DIVERGENT THINKING OR NOVEL PRODUCTS

But why would we need such a concept?

1) What is a creative person – do we restrict ourselves by the emphasis on the extra-ordinary?

• We now know that creative persons have a distinctive profile of personality traits. For instance, creativity is highly correlated with openness to experience (as defined in the 5-factor model of personality; Carson, Peterson, & Higgins,2005; Harris, 2004; McCrae, 1987), a personality dimension that also correlates with reduced latent inhibition (Peterson & Carson, 2000; Peterson, Smith, & Carson, 2002) (Simonton, 2013, p. 218).

2) The problems related to a one-sided focus on divergent thinking

• Choosing pathways as a central concept, the intention is to focus explicitly on creativity, not as isolated, divergent thinking, but as concrete movements and ways of making in everyday life.

• As such, I suggest that creativity research also focuses its attention on ordinary life to find out more about the phenomena of creativity.

Reflecting pathways – where to go?

• To conclude, I suggest that creativity research to a higher extent than hitherto seen begins to investigate the ordinary rather than only the exceptional or the explicit creation of what is new.

• Furthermore, it is suggested that creative pathways is a term that may guide researchers interested in the simultaneous development of persons and social practices.

Conclusion

• Pathways are created in ordinary life and the formation of these may indeed involve creativity and the improvisational co-creation of opportunities for action.

• As such, studying pathways may direct creativity researchers towards the potentials of creativity in everyday life and my shed new light of the processes of creativity itself.

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